Social loafing
Overview
Social loafing refers to the phenomenon where, when people work together in a group, the effort each person puts in drops below the effort they put in when working alone. It is also called the Ringelmann effect.
| People pulling the rope | Force each person exerts |
|---|---|
| 1 (alone) | 100% (the baseline) |
| 8 | Drops to about 49% of the solo effort |
It is also called the Ringelmann effect, after the French agricultural engineer Maximilien Ringelmann, who discovered it.
Question boxes and social loafing
A growing number of followers on a question box sets the stage for social loafing. In a question box with 100 followers, someone may feel, "If I don't ask, the question box will feel lonely," while in a question box with 10,000 followers, the same person may think, "Even if I don't ask, other people will."
As a result, the number of questions may fail to grow in proportion to the number of followers. One cause lies in the drop in each person's chance of asking. When a person answering with a large following feels that "I get few questions for how many followers I have," social loafing is one of the causes.
| Follower count | What one sender feels |
|---|---|
| 100 | If I don't ask, the question box will feel lonely |
| 10,000 | Even if I don't ask, other people probably will |
It shares the same structure as the bystander effect.
Preventing loafing
Examples of ways to prevent social loafing are making each person's contribution identifiable and making people feel their contribution has value. In a question box, the sender's name isn't shown, so it's hard to praise a sender's contribution by name in your answer. But praising the question itself in your answer, with words like "This is a sharp question" or "That's a good point," helps the sender feel that "my question has value."
Asking for questions on a specific theme also works. "Today I'll answer questions about X" makes it easier to ask than "Ask me anything," and it also helps reduce social loafing.